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RFC 1813 - 1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol

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### 1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol

This revision of the NFS protocol addresses new requirements. The need to support larger files and file systems has prompted extensions to allow 64 bit file sizes and offsets. The revision enhances security by adding support for an access check to be done on the server. Performance modifications are of three types:

1. The number of over-the-wire packets for a given set of file operations is reduced by returning file attributes on every operation, thus decreasing the number of calls to get modified attributes.

2. The write throughput bottleneck caused by the synchronous definition of write in the NFS version 2 protocol has been addressed by adding support so that the NFS server can do unsafe writes. Unsafe writes are writes which have not been committed to stable storage before the operation returns. This specification defines a method for committing these unsafe writes to stable storage in a reliable way.

3. Limitations on transfer sizes have been relaxed.

The ability to support multiple versions of a protocol in RPC will allow implementors of the NFS version 3 protocol to define clients and servers that provide backwards compatibility with the existing installed base of NFS version 2 protocol implementations.

The extensions described here represent an evolution of the existing NFS protocol and most of the design features of the NFS protocol described in [Sandberg] persist. See Changes from the NFS version 2 protocol on page 11 for a more detailed summary of the changes introduced by this revision.

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Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
RFC 1813 - 1.1 Scope of the NFS version 3 protocol